


devour

by atiredonnie



Category: OMORI (Video Game)
Genre: Bad Ending, Emetophobia, Gen, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-18 17:13:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29612706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atiredonnie/pseuds/atiredonnie
Summary: In the distant, washed-out future, Aubrey will stare directly at the window and speak to it, as if she’s being recorded, half-eaten cigarette dangling between limp fingers. “I should’ve known, then,” she’ll state dryly to nothing at all, eyes soft and flint-cold all at once. “I should’ve known the second I woke up that something was horribly wrong.” She’ll raise the mangled cigarette halfway to her lips and then hesitate, on the precipice of something bigger than her, something she dare not acknowledge.“But I didn’t.”Basil leaves them all behind, in their own ways.
Relationships: Aubrey & Hero & Kel (OMORI), Aubrey & Hero (OMORI), Aubrey & Kel (OMORI), Hero & Kel (OMORI)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 85





	devour

**Author's Note:**

> this one's kind of dark. content warning for suicide and emeto.

Aubrey wakes up to the sound of stifled hiccups and television static.

In the distant, washed-out future, Aubrey will stare directly at the window and speak to it, as if she’s being recorded, half-eaten cigarette dangling between limp fingers. “I should’ve known, then,” she’ll state dryly to nothing at all, eyes soft and flint-cold all at once. “I should’ve known the second I woke up that something was horribly wrong.” She’ll raise the mangled cigarette halfway to her lips and then hesitate, on the precipice of something bigger than her, something she dare not acknowledge. 

“But I didn’t.”

In the now, Aubrey rubs at her eyes, still half-asleep and drunk on the early, violet light of the barely-morning, vaguely aware of the sound of bare feet thumping against sandalwood. Hero is already in the hallway, bent over a curled-up ball that looks vaguely like Polly. Aubrey squints. A curled-up ball that _is_ Polly, apparently. Next to her, Kel yawns, a big, dramatic motion, before Hero sends him a glare that could cut glass and Kel abruptly stops. That’s when Aubrey knows something is deeply wrong, deeply off, the world tilted ever so slightly on its axis. She tilts her head just-so to peer at Kel out of the corner of her eye, and the shaken expression on his round face makes it clear that he’s just come to the same conclusion. 

They stand up in sync, pushing off the mass of warm quilts and handmade blankets the four of them had all arranged the night previous, and that’s when Aubrey realizes that Sunny is gone, having presumably left late, late last night. This fact hits her like a slap, the brutality of his absence, a hole punched clumsily into their carefully-built peace as if through paper. Polly continues to moan, a crumpled-up ghost in every way but the physical, and Aubrey begins to walk gingerly through the hallway, as if a single too-loud step will make the woman in question shatter like glass. Instead of breaking apart, Polly scrambles forwards, clinging to Aubrey’s socks, eyes flat and wet like twin mirrors, lamplight reflecting in the desperate planes of her face. 

“You don’t have to see it,” She says shakily, fingers grasping at the soft space where Aubrey’s flesh meets cloth. “You don’t _want_ to see it. Go home, please, please go home.” 

Something fills up inside Aubrey, then, white-hot and vicious, and she kicks the woman away. “See _what_ ,” she snarls, “See _what_ , exactly,” and then there’s a choked noise like someone’s been kicked in the ribs and Kel is backing away from the barely-open doorway, moonlight faint on his pallid face like a benediction. He doubles over and throws up in a trash can, and instantly Hero is striding towards him, all soft concern and gentle words in spite of his body being no doubt numb with pain. Tremors of something awful begin to vibrate beneath Aubrey’s paint-smudged sneakers, betwixt her knees, and when she walks past the two boys and their quickly-pooling distress it is finally quiet, white noise boring into her ears and blocking out everything else. 

Aubrey opens the door. 

She doesn’t really have the words to describe what’s in there, and, once again later, she’ll tell nobody-in-particular that she’d glad for it. “I’ve never been an artist or a poet or whatever.” She’ll say, absentmindedly tapping her forearm to the tune of distant, tinny music, lost in her own invisible and private documentary. “I always kind of resented myself for my lack of creative spirit, you know? The most color I ever injected into my life was the color I injected into my hair. But in retrospect, I’m glad for it. I’m glad that I can’t possibly sum up just what that night felt like. Looked like. Smelt like, down to the bone. Nobody there could.” She stops tapping and stares with gutted-fish eyes at the space where a body should be.

“I’d like to meet the sick fuck who could.” 

Aubrey doesn’t go back home. 

The rot and grime clinging to each and every surface seems simply intolerable, the decay she’s put up with for every second of her fetid life an obstacle she can’t cross, not now. She follows Kel and Hero to their house, trailing just a step behind, eyes fixed on the pavement. A colony of fire ants crosses over one of her shoes, and she stares at each and every one individually. Little parts of a whole, violently red building blocks. She shoves her hands in her pockets and smears the tip of her toe across the ground, smearing the bugs to a fine paste. 

In front of her, Kel quickly pivots, runs off into the grass beyond the neat boundary of the sidewalk. Hero stumbles, just once, and then books it after him. Aubrey looks blankly at the brothers, and for a second she can see their insides suspended in the air, their various marionette strings severed by tragedy after tragedy, worn down to sawdust and clenched fistfuls of pain. And Aubrey follows. 

The reason behind Kel scampering like a wild animal into the softness of the space between the woods and civilization becomes quickly obvious. He folds in on himself like a collapsible chair and vomits, beetle-bright tears lurching out of his eyes, miniature stars. Hero wordlessly rubs his back, a gentle motion, staring out at the thin line of the horizon and the wobbling sun poking out from behind it. “Just another morning,” Aubrey says quietly, and her words come out sharper than she intended. Kel’s entire body convulses, and for a second Aubrey wonders if he’s having some kind of fit, if she should try and get closer and help, but he smells like sickness and animal venom and she can’t. Not for the life of her. Not with a gun to her head. 

“Why does this keep happening?” Kel asks, voice plaintive and small, so small, so much smaller than his skin. “Why can’t we stop it? All I’ve ever wanted to do is help, I just wanted,” he sniffles, rubbing away snot from the curve of his face, “I wanted things to be fine. Not good. Just fine. Why can’t they ever just be okay?”

“You did your best,” Aubrey says, and her tone is limp and flat and dead. “We all did our best. They can’t ask more of us than that.” Hero pulls Kel into his orbit and holds him close to his chest. Aubrey does not move. 

In the distance, sirens begin to blare, feverish, red and blue and white and ready to hold death gently in its maw. 

Sometime much later, when the wound will only ache when it is deliberately poked at, Aubrey will stare at the setting sun like it has something special to tell her and her alone. The cigarette will fizzle out on damp wood. She’ll raise nothing to her lips and blow out a cloud of scattered ghosts. 

“I wanted to leave my past like leaving a country. All at once, and without looking in the other direction.” 

She’ll bite at her nails just once, and her hand will come away wet with blood and prayer. 

“If you haven’t noticed, I don’t often get what I want.”


End file.
